So many factors influence how our children develop and we know birth order is only one. How parents interact with each child is another and parenting skills are a huge focus for most of us. The other day I came across an article about some research that had been done in 2003 that took both the birth order and the parent’s skill level into account. (Journal of Marriage and Family 65.3) The question raised for this research was this. Will a parent’s experience with a first born improve their interactions with and parenting of the second born child? (more…)